I recently encountered a very angry man.

That isn’t particularly novel these days. There are angry men (and women) everywhere. This particular man was at the grocery store. He was tall, well built, middle aged, and dressed casually. And as I steered my cart towards the produce section, the man abruptly stepped in front of me and yelled out: “THERE’S NO PANDEMIC! IT’S ALL B.S.!” 

(But, he did not say “B.S.”).

I was wearing a simple cloth mask that day, as I do whenever I am indoors in public. And this too was not novel. Many of us are wearing masks indoors, with a great number of stores advising or mandating it. And while the cloth mask offers some protection for the wearer, most understand that it is primarily a safeguard for others. A barrier to prevent us from unwittingly (and moistly!) breathing viral particles on grocery clerks and fellow shoppers alike when we come in close contact with them (as when someone unexpectedly pulls in front of you with their grocery cart). 

Regardless of its simple or common appearance, my face covering seemed to incense the man. 

Stunned by our initial encounter, I watched the man as he shopped. Everything about him appeared agitated, almost comically so. Items were thrown, rather than placed into his cart. He moved hurriedly and impatiently around the other shoppers. When we both arrived back at the checkout line, I watched him swear loudly at the wait, and then abandon his line for the self checkout. The man swiped his entire cart’s worth across the small scanner, breathing hard and sighing aloud each time an item required a cashier’s assistance. Incredibly, the man had chosen not to purchase any bags and instead attempted to pile his full grocery cart’s worth on the small scale beside the scanner, so that items were continuingly falling to the floor. And then, because truth is stranger than fiction, the scanner malfunctioned, and the man was forced to wait as the (unfortunate) grocery clerk assisted him to re-ring in his entire order.

And then, with the eyes of every patron and employee of the store on him, he disappeared. And we all breathed a sigh of relief. I had been watching the man with great interest, but also wariness. Being near him felt like being near a dog who faintly curls his upper lip in a snarl, exposing his teeth. 

This was an angry man. But he was not the only one. I was angry, too.

From the moment he yelled out, I was angry. Annoyed at his brazen ignorance. Resentful of the space he occupied around him, how he demanded that every other shopper be wary of him. He was the second stranger in less than a week who had derided me for wearing a mask indoors, and I was furious that a piece of cloth has become so divisive. Angry that we are still here, still arguing the legitimacy of a pandemic that changed our world completely, which has injured and  killed hundreds of thousands (yes, even if they had pre existing conditions…). 

But I was also angry before I met this man. For months now I have noticed a low grade irritability within me. An agitation stirring just below the surface. A readiness to be annoyed or incensed. As if I am constantly and consistently being squeezed, just a little tighter than the moment before. It shows itself as a little less grace for those who frustrate me. Even the occasional outburst at those whom I feel safest with and love the most. 

If you had asked me why I have been feeling so agitated and irritable, so prone to outbursts, I don’t think I could have told you a specific reason. And had someone asked the tall angry man in the grocery store why he was so irate, he might not be able to articulate what he was so angry at either. 

That is how anger works. Anger is like a fire. It builds until it ignites, and as it grows it becomes harder to contain, searching wildly for any fuel that will sustain it. The flashpoint may be specific, but the fuel is not. And in this moment, with so much that feels uncertain and beyond our control, there is fuel everywhere. 

There is so much I don’t know about the tall man at the grocery store. But this much I do know: long before he stepped into that store and saw my mask, he had been squeezed by the same factors we all are. Whatever fears we harbour, whatever anxieties we carry, and whatever agitation and anger we bear are amplified in this moment. 

That does not excuse poor behavior, of course. Empathy and understanding is not synonymous with acceptance. Swearing at strangers in public is not a defensible behavior from a grown man. He should know and act better. Likewise, when I find myself irritable and yelling at my own family for reasons I cannot pinpoint, I should know and act better, too. Each of us is responsible for our actions, and our reactions, regardless of the stress we currently find ourselves in. 

And our stress will increase. As tested and stretched and squeezed as everyone has already felt amidst this pandemic, the coming fall and winter seasons will feel tighter. 

There are many things we can expect to squeeze us. Viral cases will continue to rise. Face to face visits will decrease as smoke and colder weather decreases our ability to gather outside. Financial hardships will increase as many businesses struggle to stay afloat in a limping economy. Repeatedly we (and others) will have to decide between safety and liberty. We can expect to know someone who is infected. We can expect outbreaks in our workplaces and schools. We can expect our children to be sent home from school or daycare for weeks at a time with sniffling noses and coughs that have nothing to do with Covid; and we can expect to worry for them as we await intrusive test results. 

And we can expect to feel it all. We can expect to feel apprehensive, anxious, frustrated and angry. We can expect to see other’s feeling the same. Sometimes all in the same day. Sometimes all within the same grocery store trip. 

If this sounds like fear mongering, I promise you it is not. This is mental preparation, and preparation is a gift to the aware and the alert. If we knew that the temperature was dropping, we would bring out warmer clothes. If we knew there was a famine coming, we would store up food. And the one thing we know there will be a shortage of in the days to come, is grace. 

So let’s stock up now. Let’s decide to be gracious, now. Even if we do not know the specific ways the months ahead will stress us, we can all expect to be squeezed. It would be dangerous to blindly deny all the turmoil we carry within us, and stresses that the upcoming days may bring us. And it is too much for us to expect that we will never be anxious, irritable or angry. So instead, let us be gracious, both with ourselves and others.

Gracious with our stressed out spouses and children. Gracious with our public health officers. Gracious with our children’s teachers. Gracious with those working in our hospitals. Gracious with those grocery clerks assisting us through malfunctioning self checkout scanners. Gracious with even those who are angry and at their worst. And perhaps they will return grace to us, when we need it most. 

And if that sounds a little like how masks are supposed to work… well, it’s not a coincidence.

(Content Warning: Sexual, physical and psychological abuse.)

For 10 years, I worked in a group home with adults with disabilities. It was a job I felt completely unprepared for. Because I was.

The job was a drastic change from all my previous employment. The organization that hired me trained me, but I would soon find that very little could prepare you for the unknown and unexpected.

The very first time I stepped into the home, I remember greeting one of the individuals. Other than his form fitting wheelchair, he didn’t have any obvious physical indications of disability. I said hello, and then stood awkwardly as the recipient of my greeting starred through me. 

The staff member beside me leaned close and whispered: “it’s okay, just stay here for a while”. I met my companions gaze. Made myself stay there, uncomfortable, and exposed. As if I was the one on display. Suddenly, a giant smile broke forth and a squeal of excitement arose from my companion. Nothing hidden, nothing held back.

That was my first lesson. And in the individual in front of me, my first teacher.

The next ten years would be full of seminars from unforeseen experiences, unlikely teachers. Some teachers in our life refine a concept or help us acquire language or imagery. Others open the door to new worlds we were previously ignorant to. This was the latter.

Working at this home was my introduction to healthcare in general and particular. But it was also my introduction to a range of lived experience I had never considered. The needs of the individuals I cared for varied greatly. Some were talkative, most were non verbal, all of them expressive communicators (if you had the eyes to see and ears to hear).  Each new sound, each unexpected head nod, shake, or dismissive arm wave, each health crisis, each howl of unexpected laughter a lesson. These were the instructors, inviting me into a wider and deeper world.

The organization I worked for had started small in the 1970s, when a collection of families chose to band together for support and resources, choosing to care for their with children with disabilities in their own homes, rather than large mental institutions. The organization grew as these large facilities began to be phased out in the 1980s and 90s amid revelations of wide scale abuse, neglect, and even forced sterilization. 

When the organization began expanding, there was a vision for a new type of home for those with disabilities. Lessons had been learned from the oppressive structures of the past. The homes would be houses, not institutions. Indiscernible as a group home from the sidewalk. Each individual would have their own room, and each room would be reflective of its resident. Walls would be painted. Pictures would be hung. 

It was all part of a bigger movement of course. As mundane as paint and pictures sound, it was a world away from green-grey hospital walls and sterile rooms. It was a movement from the institution to the home, and from anonymity to personhood. And it was occurring in across the globe. 

Of all organizations participating in this movement, none stands out for me like L’arche.

L’arche was created in 1946 when a young man of 18 was invited by his Dominican priest to visit an asylum for the mentally ill in France. Seeing the horrors of that place, and the inherent beauty and nobility of those with mental and physical challenges, the man opened the first L’arche home where adults with and without disabilities lived together. Not in shifts, not in respite care, but a full life together. The good, the bad, and the beautifully mundane. The man lived in that very cottage himself, and would count the people he lived with there as some of his closest friends. Other members became involved and new L’arche homes and communities were opened. Eventually the homes would span across countries and continents.

The man that spearheaded this organization spent the remainder of his life advocating for full acceptance and celebration of those individuals with special needs. Through L’arche communities, thousands have found acceptance, love and belonging; ‘Abled’ and ‘Disabled’ alike. This man would go on to pen best sellers based on his observations about community. He spoke at length, painting a picture with his words of a broader, inclusive, and complete humanity. 

I knew at once that he would be my teacher.

I discovered his teachings while I was still working at the group home. As much as I had learned in my years of experience, this man spoke with a tenderness and admiration for the individuals that he lived alongside that was both exciting and foreign to me. Despite being a Catholic philosopher, the man often referred to himself as a humanist first, and theologian second. The order was important. This man’s reverence for God seemed rooted in a deep and grounded love for humanity.

I was hardly the only one enamoured with this man and his work. In his lifetime he was revered as a living saint. He was the recipient of multiple prestigious awards including the Templeton Prize, the Order of Canada, and France’ Legion of Honor. Upon his passing in May of 2019, people the world over wondered aloud if he would soon be canonized as a Saint.

That man was Jean Vanier. And no one is wondering that now.

Last year the organization L’arche began receiving claims of sexual abuse against their founder. A third party was hired to investigate these claims, and in February, a report detailing their findings was released. It is as transparent as it is damning. 

The report details a history of repeated sexual abuse of six non-disabled women by Vanier. Despite not knowing each other, each account is disturbingly similar. The victims looked to Vanier for spiritual direction and formation, and instead received sexual, physical and emotional abuse steeped in spiritual language and imagery, and absolute secrecy. It also outlines a long history of sexual abuse by Vanier’s mentor, Father Thomas Phillipe. Multiple accounts, and Vanier’s correspondence with Phillipe, indicate that both men considered the sexual abuse to be a form of spiritual awakening, a mystical experience with the Divine. 

This was, of course, not the victim’s experience. 

These women were told that the most ugly and horrific acts were in fact beautiful, meaningful, and spiritual. It took many of them years to begin the process the abuse they had been subject to, and years more before they could speak of it. The first reported case of abuse occurred in 1970, the last in 2005. All of the women abused would have watched as the world celebrated this man. As governments and those in prominent positions admired his gentle qualities and wise words, and mourned him as a modern saint. And they knew the truth. That the man who spent his life advocating for the inherent dignity of each human being didn’t really believe it. Not all the way. At least not for them. 

The victims who were assaulted by Vanier are worth remembering, worth focusing our attention on, because so many people have felt violated by these revelations. And many of us have a dog in this fight. Many of us had already categorized Vanier as a Saint or hero. I certainly had. That re-categorization as abuser and predator takes some time. Much ink has been spilled writing about people reckoning with the disillusionment of who Vanier really was. Friends who knew him appeared dazed, as though struck. People who revered him and followed his work appear lost and bewildered. And the organization that he founded grapples with the fact that his teachings and vision are woven throughout their DNA. 

L’arche is, of course, not Jean Vanier. To their immense credit, L’arche has repeatedly and publicly declared their support for the women abused, and roundly condemned the actions of their founder. They have created booklets with pictures outlining the abuse so that members who cannot read can understand the offenses. Throughout their website, links to past essays and teachings by Vanier redirect back to the findings of this inquiry. 

Everything, all that this man has accomplished and said, is now seen in the light of the darkness of these offenses. 

When I began to write this post, I wondered if this was fair. Vanier’s ideas and vision have been an inspiration to so many, including myself. And the fruits of his labour and vision have sprawled across the globe, bringing love and community to so many. To this day, he remains one of the finest writers and communicators on the human condition I have ever come across. 

What can we do with so beautiful, and so vile? Can we separate the two?

This is a familiar question.

Can we watch a Woody Allen film, and enjoy his talent for intricate dialogue and clever framing, knowing that he slept with and married his adopted daughter?

Can we still enjoy Kevin Spacey’s bone chilling depiction of Frank Underwood, or Kayser Soze (sorry, 24 year old spoiler warning…), or American Beauty’s Lester Burnham, knowing that he has been accused of decades of inappropriate sexual advances towards his coworkers, including minors?

What do I do with my Ryan Adams’ t-shirt, or the collection of albums that I own of his in light of the series of allegations levied against him?

The list of these questions and examples is long, and it grows longer daily. How do we separate the art from the artist? How do we separate the instruction from the teacher? Can we even do such a thing?

In the case of Vanier, I cannot. As much as his words have meant to me. As much as I appreciate all the great and important work that he has played a role in. I am grateful for the lessons he has taught me. But that well is poisoned, and I will not drink from it again.

One of the first lessons that those with disabilities taught me was integration. When an individual was bored they blew raspberries or yelled out loudly. When they were amused, their body would shake with laughter. When that first resident looked through me all those years ago, and then erupted in joy, I knew that there was nothing hidden.

There is no lesson more important for the spiritual teacher than that of integration. Without it, nothing else matters. If a man or woman deems to teach others how to live, we have to trust that they have done the work themselves. That they can practice what they preach. That they have integrity, that they are integrated.

All of Vanier’s teachings spoke to the belief that there is no difference in value between him and the person in front of him. What he did repeatedly, consciously, and secretly to those vulnerable women was a betrayal to them, and to himself as well. Jean Vanier was dis-integrated. There existed at least two, drastically different Jeans. The one who lived and spoke humbly and with reverence towards his housemates with disabilities, and the one who repeatedly and systematically preyed upon vulnerable women that looked up to him. Whether Jean was a good man who commited great evil, an evil man who somehow accomplished good, or a complex man capable of both blessings and curses, it hardly matters. Jean never attained the integration on display by so many around him. He failed to learn the central lesson he taught. 

Jean Vanier may no longer be my teacher, but his revelation has been.

Because we are all students, and everything can be your teacher.

Especially the lessons you would rather not learn.

I have two fears.

Actually, I have many, many fears, but we don’t have the time, and I’m sure I’ll write about each as time and interest warrants. 

These are not the fears that keep you up at night, or cause you to glance over your shoulder nervously when walking alone. These are not red-balloon tied to a sewer gutter fears. These are the fears that settle in your gut. The fears that cause me to feel unexpectedly anxious or irritable. That unrest that finds me tapping my foot rapidly or pulling at my hair, or chewing absentmindedly on the inside of my lip. That invite me to look ever to the next distraction, to refresh my social feed again and again. That cause me to put on another podcast, another audio book. Anything to not be left alone with my thoughts. 

Today is the last day of my thirties. And these are the two fears: 

1. I am running out of time, energy, and resources to chase down that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
2. The sinking dread that there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. 

This is a silly metaphor, I know. There is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. So says everyone who has never reached the end of the rainbow themselves. 

Last summer I remember staring at a vivid rainbow outside of our house, and marvelling at what a clever illusion it was. The end of the rainbow did not fade out of view, or reach mysteriously behind nearby hills, it landed in a backyard, between the 3rd and 4th row of houses on the hill across the highway. I could mark the spot on Google maps. Could have driven down myself, and grabbed that pot of riches before the resident of Sullivan Road was ever the wiser. 

The pot, of course, is never seen. I think that’s important. After all, in our mind it’s always overflowing. More than enough to satisfy our debts, our needs, and even our wildest longings. 

The metaphor makes perfect sense to me because of how clear the rainbow appears, and how limitless the gold is imagined. 

I find myself chasing rainbows all the time. The pots of gold are different, sometimes defined, often vaguely alluded to. They are often limitless, and they are always the solution a problem. 

This is a central thesis of the philosopher Peter Rollins. He refers to it as ‘the lack’. He suggests that each of us has a lack, and each of us is believing a lie (or many lies) about what will eliminate the lack in our lives. It might be money, it might be success, it might be adoration, or respect. It could look like veganism, or spirituality, or fitness. Rollins jokes that in his home town of Los Angeles, it looks a lot like CrossFit.

In my own faith tradition of Christianity, it was common language to speak of a “God shaped hole”. And though that sounds like a trite title of a Christian-rock song (it absolutely was), there may be more truth to it than those in church were willing to admit. Because here too, we attempted to fill the lack with things that seemed like, but were not, God. Specific prayers, right beliefs, structured habits, even an authentic relationship with the Divine. All intended to fill the lack. All unsuccessful. 

And how do I know that they were unsuccessful? Because we kept feeling the lack. Kept chasing rainbows. Kept looking for the next bigger and better pot of gold.

As I rapidly approach forty, I have never ran so hard towards the end of the next rainbow, and it’s magical gold. This is the result of that first fear, a frantic impatience that I’m running out of time. There is that sense that I must do it now. Be a more spontaneous husband, be a more present father. Become a more competent and compassionate nurse. Become a successful writer and communicator. Get published, write that book! Get in shape now, because 40 could be the new 30!

None of these things, are bad, of course. But each is promising something. That a perfect relationship with my spouse and children is achievable. That somehow I could avoid the heartache of loving and misunderstanding another as we grow and change. That with enough experience and training I could anticipate and properly respond to each crisis at work. That with proper diet and exercise I could feel better than I did in my 20s (this one might actually be achievable, I was awful to myself in my 20s…). That if I was a published author and had the admiration of friends and strangers, that I could quiet my own critic inside my head.

But the real beauty of Rollins’ concept of ‘the lack’ is that you may get exactly what you hope for, and still find it wanting. That you might have an amazing marriage, resilient and loving children, ageless complexion, a respectable career that you enjoy and have mastery of, and achieve your wildest ambitions.

And you will still feel incomplete.

Which brings me to the most deceptive rainbow, the most elusive pot of gold. That there is a way to navigate all of these desires, all these rainbows and pots, in a manner that actually fills the lack. A life in perfect balance. Exercise and diet, but also wings and beer. Friendship and love, but also silence and solitude. Spirituality and realism in turns. Wisdom to lead the best life, one where the lack simply disappears. 

I know that this is the most deceptive rainbow, because it’s the one I want to chase, even now. The one I’m not certain is false, even as I examine it. This is the rainbow visible across the highway. The one I suspect I could actually find the end of, if only I knew the exact route and coordinates. 

But I also suspect that wisdom, true wisdom, is the acceptance of my second fear. That there is no pot of gold, no magic bullet, no wise and skillful navigating that will ultimately fulfill that lack within me. 

That the lack may be my oldest friend, and constant companion. That the lack will be with me always. No matter how in shape, no matter how accomplished, no matter how loved or respected. The lack stands beside me, whispering and reminding that the most beautiful illusions are just that. 

That I may never feel whole, but I am.

And that my life, and all that I require, is here.

I was twelve before I discovered the love of writing. That’s not an especially novel age for discovery, but it did come as a bit of a shock. I was never much of a reader growing up. My comprehension was fine, not great, not outstanding. But my reading speed was slow. Still is. I would spend weeks or months with a simple novel, not hours or days like some of my friends. 

Writing too, was painful. Literally painful. 

I always held my pencil the wrong way, and try as I might, try as my parents might, I would always revert back to my incorrect, vice like grip. As if I were attempting to break the instrument in front of me, rather than allowing it to simply get out of the way of my imagination. I tried triangular molds for the front of the pencil or pen. I tried intentionally placing the pen in the correct grip before beginning. The finger placement would last exactly as long as I was thinking about it. But eventually you should start thinking about the words and the story, not the grip. And so I wrote, slowly and painfully and incorrectly. 

More importantly, I never seemed to understand the construct of a story in the way many of my peers did. When I first discovered my love of writing, many of my peers were comfortably writing chapter stories with multiple characters and a central plot. It felt like looking at algebraic math equation you don’t understand (you know, the one with more letters than logically makes sense for a numeric problem). I could see that there was structure behind it all, but it just wasn’t accessible to me.

And then? Then I discovered poetry. And no high falutin pretentious poetry, either. My best friend gave me a collection of poems entitled,“A Light in the Attic” by Shel Silverstein. 

Everything about Shel Silverstein was fun. I had no idea what I was holding at the time. What it might start within me. Silverstein felt like the spiritual successor to Dr. Suess. (I’m sure for many children, Silverstein and Suess are contemporaries, but I was amazingly unaware of Shel’s work until middle school). Like Suess, Silverstein was ridiculous, nonsensical, phonetic and playful. But occasionally touching on something much bigger than the simple rhyme at the surface. Both talked about racism, group think, and religion, but it was cleverly hid behind stanzas and made up words. And most importantly to me, Silverstein was accessible. Inviting, even. 

In his poem, Invitation, Shel beckons to his audience to draw a little closer: 

If you are a dreamer, come in,

If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, 

A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer…

If you’re a pretender, come sit by my fire

For we have some flax-golden tales to spin.

Come in! 

Come in!

And so I did. I sat by Shel’s fire for a long while. I dreamed, I wished, I hoped, and I pretended. Here was someone I could emulate. Here was a poet that didn’t seem to take himself too seriously, whose language and stanza structure were simple. I started writing my own playful poems in the rhyming pattern of ABCB:

The stanza has a set of four.

The first and the third don’t rhyme.

The second and the fourth ones do.

You’ll have a poem in no time.

See? Not my best work, but it’s easy. 

And that was enough. That was a math equation with no alphabet. That was the machinery, the structure getting out of the way. The medium that allowed the message. Any message in fact.  

Writing about a crush on the girl that sits in front of you in english? That seemed the stuff of diaries, not literature. But as a set of stanzas? As a poem? In even such a simple rhyming format, my interest became playful, refined, and imminently palatable.  

When we had to present a piece of writing in front of the class, most of my peers awkwardly stood up shaking, voices quivering, never making eye contact. They hurriedly read their stories in barely audible tones. Very few twelve year olds are good public speakers. 

But when I had to present my work, a poem with cadence, and rhyme, I could feel the interest of my class. Poems gave me the format and permission to explore whatever I felt at the time. And a twelve year old feels a lot. 

I became known for my poems. I don’t even think my poetry was especially insightful. But I was persistent. Each new crush, I wrote a poem (or seven) of unrequited love. I read the Poem “David”, and not liking it’s ending, wrote an alternate poem. I watched the movie “Murder in the First” and rhymed about the (imagined) experience of feeling hopeless and powerless in a jail cell. I tackled subjects as big as alcoholism and faith within those stanzas. I wrote year end presentations entirely in rhyme (which was neither required or encouraged, but met with middle school teacher shrugs).

Other people called me a poet, and I liked the identity. It’s not such a bad label for your ego if you tend to be a bit more introspective and emotional. But I always felt a disconnect with other, non rhyming poets. 

I could fiddle with the structure of my poems, change around the ABCB for an ABBA (or some other combination of letters) but they always rhymed. The truth is, I didn’t understand most non rhyming poetry (which to state the absolutely obvious, is almost all poetry). When we studied them in class, I was once again lost. Not necessarily on the content, but why they were written as poems in the first place. When classmates would excitedly expect to find a poetic peer, they would hand me their non punctuated lines of seemingly random sentences, and I would smile, and thank them for sharing, and internally vow to never write a non rhyming poem.  

Some non rhyming poetry focused on structure, and while I didn’t love the format, I at least understood it:

Never wrote haiku

Much as I knew it’s structure

They would rarely rhyme.

But non structured, non rhyming poems? What the hell were they? They seemed the literary equivalent to a Jackson Pollock painting. “Give enough monkeys a typewriter”, I thought, “and eventually they’ll produce a poem”.

Looking back now, I think I was afraid. I had claimed the title of poet gladly, and here were others, alike and yet not alike. Familiar and yet foreign.Threatening my identity. I doubled down on my own particular poetic preference. Like so many things I didn’t understand, I held the inaccessible with disdain. If a poem could be anything, rhyming, not rhyming, plain or ambiguous, then anyone can write a poem, I thought.

Turns out, I was right.

Anyone can write a poem. From twelve year old Matt, to the celebrated and revered poets we study in our schools, to the unknown writer of the limerick within a dollar store birthday card. All poets. 

But that doesn’t seem right, does it? It doesn’t seem right to lump in my ever rhyming middle school poetry with the works of Mary Oliver, or John Keats, or even Shel Silverstein. Neither does it seem right to include that mass produced, overly sentimentalized birthday card (to no one in particular) in the great and mystical category of poetry.

What I’m really asking (both then and now), is what sets poetry apart from mere rhyme or random pairings of words or sentences.What is the work of the poet? 

The truth is, I didn’t have a good definition of what poetry was for years. And for years that lack of definition never bothered me. I wrote prolifically through middle school, high school and into my early twenties. And then I stopped.  

Why I stopped has always been a matter of curiosity. My wife asks me suspiciously why there is so much poetry for ex-girlfriends, but next to none for her. I’ve joked that there’s not enough sorrow or heartbreak in our relationship to drive me back to the page/ keyboard. 

But certainly there has been heartbreak outside of our marriage. I have lost friends, lost faith, lost children, lost which direction is up. These would certainly outweigh the impetus of my seventh grade heartache. Where are those poems? 

Maybe the world appears less simple, or I am reluctant to simplify something as complex as those losses into a few simple stanzas. Maybe the only poetry I’ve ever known how to write is inadequate for such love, and loss, and anger, and even resolution.Ultimately, I think I stopped writing poems because I stopped believing I was a poet. 

We all can fall victim to imposter syndrome from time to time, when we feel unworthy for the identities we have already received and claimed. Nothing brings this to the forefront quicker than realizing how little you understand something you are passionate about. I stopped believing I was a poet because my view of poetry was too small.  I had not done the work of understanding what poetry was. I had been practicing a very specific ‘what’, and’ how’, but had never understood the ‘why’. 

And a focus on the ‘how’ and the ‘what’ are especially unhelpful when it comes to poetry. Think about what poetry is for a second. Rhyming? Doesn’t have to. A certain rhythm? Not necessarily. Distinguishable sentence and punctuation structure? Actually, poetry gets a pass on that as well. It seems that the one distinguishing trait that a poem must possess, is that it is not prose. That’s a strange way to define something; by what it’s not.

Now, there may be an agreed upon rules for poetry that I don’t know about. I’m not an English major. But that’s the ‘how’ again. Coutless poets and readers have asked what makes a poem a poem, and have come to only partial agreement. And when you ask the question, “what is poetry”, you’re really asking, “why is this a poem, and not anything else?”. I love the question, and I love each attempt at the answer. Even if each answer proves inadequate. 

Some of our greatest words have no adequate definition. Love, Art, Divinity, Poetry. The unnamable becomes ever polyonamous, having many names. This is why Love is a feeling, but not just a feeling. It’s commitment, but not just commitment. Joy, but not just joy. If love exists at all, it is not merely any of these things. But it might include all of them. We keep throwing these words at it, and all of them are inadequate. But we have to keep trying. Put another name on it. Turn the gem and see it from another angle. 

A few years back a piece of poetry caught me off guard. It was less than a page in length (with a good deal of white space in between stanzas and sentences). The words that it used were pedestrian. But it spoke to a great paradox inside of me. A paradox that many have grappled with and written volumes about. And yet it spoke far more directly and truthfully than anything else I had read on the subject. That was a poem by David Whyte, who suggests that “poetry is that to which we have no defense”. I have found this to be a very good metric. Whether it is from Whyte, Oliver, Rilke, Silverstein or Suess, each has whispered in my ear something beautiful, something true, and something to which I have no defense. 

That poem, and it’s revelation, was another invitation. Just like Shel Silverstein’s in grade 12. An invitation back into a world of poetry. To come sit by it’s fire again. Back into a genre that is entirely different than the novel, the interview, the short story. This time I huddled around the fire much more humbly. Not as an imitator or pretender, but as someone beginning to understand the ‘why’ for the first time. It is enough.

Each poem is gamble, of course. Will this poem be open to me? Will I understand it? Will it speak to me? Will it reveal something? Will I be defenceless against its revelation? Some poems remain shrouded. Some skim the surface. And some undo me.

And then just the other day, I sat at my computer and wrote. I found myself writing something that was not a post, not a short story, not a chapter in some far off unreleased book. It was profoundly honest, and therefore beautiful. It came from a place I am only vaguely aware of, either deep within, or even outside of myself. Something less crafted by me, and more gifted to me. Something to which I had no defence.  

“A poet, after all”, I thought, smiling and wiping the tears from my eyes.

The funny thing about comedians is… well, everything, hopefully. 

The first time I heard the comedian Pete Holmes speak, it was on his podcast, He was asking his guest if he thought it was game over when we die. I wasn’t sure if there would be a punchline. There was none. Just an eager conversation about consciousness, the  eternal soul, Christianity, Hinduism, Sex, and hallucinogenic drugs. 

It doesn’t take long listening to his “You Made It Weird” podcast, or watching any of his stand up specials to realize that Pete Holmes is an open book. 

And he has a book, that you can open. So I did. 

In addition to the many hours of podcast interviews and stand up specials with this man, I listened to his book, “Comedy Sex God”, with my wife on a recent roadtrip. I’m not sure exactly what got cut out, but Pete kept a lot in.

Mr Holmes’ candor is a little alarming. He has a bit in both his book and his first comedy special about being afraid of the rapture. Or specifically, a fear of Jesus returning from the clouds as he’s masturbating. Of the “second coming while he’s going for his first”, as he likes to refer to it.

If that makes you uncomfortable, you’re in good company. It makes me uncomfortable too. He places ideas and concepts next to each other that seemingly do not belong.  He seems to radically accept that which sounds shameful. Things that most of us would keep seperate, if not hidden completely. 

But that’s hardly abnormal for a comedian. Comedy often shines a spotlight on the absurd, the embarrassing, the taboo. The comedian is tasked with mining all the things we might think, but never say.  And Pete Holmes is undoubtedly a comedian. After all, nervous laughter is still laughter, right?

Lots of comedians talk about religion and spirituality. When you’re looking for the seemingly absurd, religion is a deep well of material. Neither are comedians alone in these observations. As less and less of the population affiliates with organized religion, more and more people are speaking about about how strange and or harmful their experience of religion has been. And whether these voices identify as exvangelical or simply had a front row seat to the strangeness, they are now prominently (and understandably), nontheist or antitheist.

But Pete? Petey boy is a believer. Maybe even an evangelist. Sure, he won’t come a knocking at your door on a Saturday morning in his fresh pressed collared t-shirt and tie, nor will you find him on an inspirational cable TV channel on Sunday morning with an unnaturally wide smile and perfect teeth. But if you listen to his podcast, you won’t make it through an episode without an in depth conversation about the nature of reality, whether there is something more to us than our brains and chemicals, and what might happen to us after we die. Pete loves it. You can hear it in his voice. And after asking the same questions of every guest (most of whom are also staunch atheists), he never seems to tire of it. 

Even in his youth, Pete describes being enamored with the question “what is this?”. THIS. The miracle of life, consciousness, meaning, direction. The whole shebang. THIS-NESS. Thinking and talking about THIS has been a driving force for Pete’s entire life. His Catholic and Protestant Christian upbringing, his loss of faith and identifying as an atheist, his trips on hallucinogenic drugs, his transcendental experience with a Hindu mystic and teacher, and his eventual reincorporation of his earliest faith have all come together to help Pete approach that one nagging question: “What is This?”. And while the answers have changed and evolved and expanded, the question never has.

Considering Pete’s candor and great honesty about his journey, I wonder how many believers would consider Pete’s path to the Divine illegitimate. Many of the churches I have known would teach a masterclass on how not to live based on Pete Holmes testimony. Many believers I have known would probably refer to his “belief” (quotations intentional and deriding) as a smorgasbord of spirituality. A little from over here, a bit from over there, pick and choose as you like. They would see his acceptance of hallucinogenic drugs and extramarital sex (that’s sex outside of marriage, not extra sex in a a marriage…) as moral relativism, a complete loss of absolute values. 

I can still hear those chiding voices in my head because I have said those exact same things. I still have these same uninvited thoughts and judgments. 

Imagine a fellow evangelist knocks on Pete’s door this Saturday morning. The man has his pressed white collared shirt, his suit and his tie. He holds a colored pamphlet outlining his church’s upcoming event, or theological stance on some philosophical concern. He smiles warmly as he extends the paper to Pete and expresses that God loves him and wants to know and be known by him. Pete breaks into an impossible grin, and responding exclaims “Fantastic, I’ll grab us some mushrooms. We can go hang out with God together!”.

The man, his smile fading, pamphlet withdrawing, removes himself from Pete’s doorstep with the final words, “you’re doing it wrong”.

And that’s the key, isn’t it? There is an instinctive sense that there is a right and a wrong, or a healthy and unhealthy way to do all things, including how we interact with the concept of the divine. Perhaps this is why we have hundreds, if not thousands (depending on your definition) of denominations within Christianity alone. 

And this instinctive judgement is important! Not all beliefs are made equal. Even the most strident anti-theist would agree that some approaches are more beneficial or more disastrous than others.

So it’s easy to understand and even identify with the ones calling out the boundaries. The authority figures telling the Petes of the world that they’re doing it wrong. I understand those who hold apprehension and concern when it comes to such unexpected and taboo approaches and inclusions. I understand those who uphold the importance of orthodoxy. I understand the need for gatekeepers.

But here’s the thing about gatekeepers. Gatekeepers can get really, really focused on right and wrong, in and out, orthodox and heretical. They can become so focused on the correct process that they lose the purpose. Maybe they make the mistake of believing that their journey is the only journey. Maybe they begin to look for for certainty instead of surprise. when They lose their “what is this”?-ness. 

I’m not saying that Pete Holmes found the secret sauce. I’m not a Holmes-etarian, or Holmes-ian. I’m not saying that the best way to interact with the Divine is a Catholic/ Protestant Christian upbringing, Christian college, sex shame, an early marriage to the first person you were physical with, the subsequent ending of that marriage due to neglect and infidelity, the adoption of atheism, the pursuit of a career in stand up, a hallucinogenic experience with mushrooms, a mystic experience with Ram Das, a series of sexual relationships aimed at removing previous sex shame, a reading of multiple works by Joseph Cambell, Richard Rohr and Rob Bell, and an eventual arrival at a ‘Christ leaning hindu informed belief’ in the divine. 

(Whew. That’s a mouthful. I just saved you $15 dollars and between 6-10 hours, depending on your reading or listening speed. Just kidding. It’s a great read/ listen, and Pete is a comedian, so it’s laugh out loud funny).

Pete’s the first to say that people shouldn’t try to do it like him. And I’m pretty sure that Pete doesn’t care whether he’s doing it wrong. I’m pretty sure that Pete hears that his approach, his methods or his beliefs are wrong on a regular basis. Maybe from his parents, maybe from old acquaintances from years past, maybe from congregants of his old church that he visits on Easter or Christmas, maybe online. 

I don’t think Pete cares if he’s doing it right, because he’s busy doing it. He’s asking the big questions that animate and excite him. He’s interacting with the divine. He’s trying to break out of a dualistic mindset. And he’s telling anyone who will listen about all of it. Warts and all. 

Pete relates how when he was finishing up his book, his mom was excited because she could give it to her church’s pastor to explain her son’s journey, validate his roundabout way of returning to belief in Jesus, the Christ, and the bible. 

Pete’s response? “Mom, it’s not for the pastor. It’s for people who lost their faith, but still catch themselves quietly alone in the car going, ‘what is this’? They’re not done.”

They’re not done. Not done with wonder, with meaning, with mystery, with awe.

And neither is Pete Holmes. Or you. Or me.